Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“We want to receive your feedback while the game is still in a relatively early stage, so that we can make meaningful changes based upon how you, the community, want to play the game.

JCB Pioneer: Mars is now at a stage where we think it is appropriate to open up to a wider audience to help us test, refine, and guide us in the development of new features.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We expect the game to remain in early access for approximately 1 year from launch, in which time we hope to develop features and make improvements based upon community feedback.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The current version of the game has a wealth of content available, but is in need of refinement, bug-fixes and further development. We intend to respond quickly to your feedback, ideas, bug reports, and data generated through your play sessions throughout Early Access.

Here are some specific feature's we're considering and want to work with you on:

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“We believe the game offers a good experience and more than enough content to sink your teeth into. The core game play is present: Survive, Explore, Colonize.

Currently, there are three vehicles available which allow you to construct a colony with over 13 different types of building.

Co-op play is not yet available, but this our highest priority feature post-launch.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Yes, potentially, the price may increase during the Early Access period as more features are added.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We want to hear directly from the community about their experience in JCB Pioneer: Mars. Player feedback will become a large part of our decision making process going forwards through Early Access and beyond.

We'll be interacting with community through the forums, reviews, and regular polls on contentious features and direction. Further to this we will be monitoring data generated by players play-sessions to really learn how players are playing the game as interestingly this is often different from how both players and the game designers can perceive they are playing the game.”

Buy JCB Pioneer: Mars

April 20

We know things have been quiet for a while but we are getting close to testing the next major update that we’ve been working on for the past 3 months. We’ve spent time going through all of your feedback, both negative and positive, and addressing as much as we can in the new update. We’ve fixed a lot of bugs but the major ones have resulted in us doing a major technical re-write of the underlying parts of the game which should result in no crashing. Feedback on over thousands of hours’ worth of gameplay testing has been reviewed to get the balancing of fun and challenge just right.

Internally we have had concerns about promising a release date to the community and then not hitting it but we fully understand the frustrations of not knowing what’s going on with the games development. We are committed to getting this update out as soon as possible but if the game is not ready then we will hold off until all of the bugs have been squashed.

Once the new build is in our QA branch we will start posting further updates / screenshots on the new game features and give you all a better idea about when the release will leave QA.

For now, we can give a brief over view of the more notable changes we’ve made recently:

Removing vast amounts of existing code and implementing newer cleaner versions for the game. This has been done for:

Resources

Crafting table

Inventory Items.

Inventory interactions for the buildings and their respective UI displays.

Player and vehicle scanning; displaying objects in the HUD compass, and objects responding to the scanning.

Hazards

All Suits and Vehicles and their interactions within the world.

Buildings; connecting them via the HAB Unit, new assets and animation.

Improving resource pools. We are refining the resource pools and implementing a “dig anywhere” mechanic. With this, although certain areas will be marked as resources specific players can still dig as they please and will be given resource materials.

Improving vehicle controls, and interaction.

Implemented new data for the Suits, Vehicles and Buildings - mostly for balancing and to facilitate with the new syntax.

New structures and classes relating to how Hazards are implemented and will execute in the game.

Added new Dust Storm assets, particle effects and logic.

General optimisations - We’ve made a huge leap in performance with a faster frame-rate and lower loading times.

February 28

Back in our previous announcement regarding Patch 1.07r we mentioned about beginning to bring you updates regarding our long-promised code base update. It’s taken us to the end of the month, but we’re now confident that what we’ve been working on in the meantime will be something you’ll all be pleased to see.

What have we been up to?

For transparency’s sake, in short, we decided it was best to bring JCB Pioneer: Mars back to the drawing board, collating all of the concerns, complaints and comments you guys have given us for the last 5/6 months - all of which are greatly appreciated. The decision to address the code base, and effectively rebuild the game from the ground up, has given us the chance to be able to readdress a lot of the games inner workings, from mechanics and design to the UI (more on that to follow). From there, we plan to add more content, a narrative, new areas for you to explore and reduce those irritating Fatal Errors. The game is going to change drastically, it’ll perhaps look and feel different but this Version 2.0 of JCB Pioneer: Mars will be a better, fun experience that we hope will be exactly what you’ve been looking for in this game.

Upgrade Changes

We’ve turned the upgrade system to a point based one. Instead of using Research Points and JCB Credits you will have to achieve Upgrade Points. The ways of achieving these points is similar to the current Research & JCB Credits format but we will expand on it beyond gathering resources and completing missions. Finding new locations, picking up specific items, reaching a certain distance from your base, to name a few.These Upgrade Points will allow you to upgrade your buildings, suits, vehicles and anything else that we may add in the future. You will be able to see how your upgrades affect the upgraded “asset” with a better designed, and clearer looking Tech Trees.

(We would like to point out that the UI isn’t complete, and will change between now and when you receive the Version 2.0 update.)

These Tech Trees will have multiple categories that you can upgrade independently, with each category having one or two available upgrades for each level. Your can prioritise what to upgrade and what to ignore and at some point down the line, you’ll be able to upgrade from wherever you are on the map and not have to keep returning to the HAB Unit.

Your Save Data Files

When we release our new code base (Version 2.0) there will be some discrepancies from the older game to the new one. However, we will be making sure that all of your save progress is retained when you download the version 2.0 update. In the case of the new upgrade system, we will reimburse players with Upgrade Points equal to the same number of upgrades they had gained in their Version 1 of the game. Buildings, vehicles and any resources you may have gathered and stored will remain in the same place, mission progress will also not be affected. We want to be able to make the transfer over to Version 2.0 as seamless and as painless as possible.

Over the months we’ll start detailing more on what we’ve been up to but for now, here’s a start.

Soon, you'll be able to team up online with other Pioneers to expand your base and earn special rewards. JCB Pioneer: Mars brings the harsh reality of the Red Planet to life with detailed high definition graphics, vehicle physics and weather effects from Unreal Engine 4.

Key Features

- A hardcore blend of survival and construction gameplay- Mine new resources, construct buildings and research new technology to grow your colony- The power of Unreal Engine 4 provides players an ultra-realistic, breath-taking planetary experience - Traverse the planet using highly futuristic heavy-duty construction and mining vehicles designed by actual JCB engineers- Overcome everything the hostile environment throws at you including meteor strikes, dust clouds and electrical storms